Botched Hangings

Where the drop is too long it can result in decapitation, as occurred with the executions of "Black Jack" Tom Ketchum on the April 26th 1901. Ketchum had put on quite a lot of weight while awaiting his execution and this hadn't been allowed for in calculating the drop. On the gallows his last words were "Let 'er go boys". At 12.17 p.m. the sheriff cut the cord holding the trap and Ketchum plunged through it. Witnesses were horrified to see the head ripped from the body, which fell to the ground on its feet and seemed to stand a for a few moments before falling over, with blood pouring from the severed neck. A similarly ghastly mess occurred at the hanging of 52 year old Eva Dugan in Phoenix Arizona on February 20th 1930. Eva was the first woman to be executed in Arizona and hers was the first execution witnessed by women. There were 5 women among the 70 or so people present. She had been sentenced to death for murdering her employer/lover. (Arizona changed to lethal gas after this fiasco). A near decapitation also occurred at the hanging of John Broderson in Washington on June 25th, 1960.

Other problems occurred from time to time to time such as the rope breaking etc. The rope broke in the 1876 hanging of James Murphy, in Ohio, who had stabbed Colonel William Dawson in Dayton. Prior to the hanging, the rope which was unusually thin, had been tested using a barrel of nails and this had apparently weakened it. When the trap was sprung, Murphy's body plunged down and at the end of the drop the rope snapped at the beam. Murphy fell to the ground and was initially unconscious. After a few moments a groan emerged from him and then he said "My God! Oh my God" Why I ain't dead, I ain't dead". He was hanged again a few minutes later - this time successfully.

Frequently, however, the drop was inadequate and the prisoner strangled, as in this description of a hanging at San Quentin in California. Clinton Duffy who was the warden there from 1942 to 1954 described the execution of Major Raymond Lisemba on May 9th 1942 as follows: "The man hit bottom and I observed that he was fighting by pulling on the straps, wheezing, whistling, trying to get air, that blood was oozing through the black cap. I observed also that he urinated, defecated, and droppings fell on the floor, and the stench was terrible". (This is not abnormal normal in death by slow hanging as the person slowly strangles). "I also saw witnesses pass out and have to be carried from the witness room. Some of them threw up." It took ten minutes for the condemned man to die. When he was taken down and the cap removed, "big hunks of flesh were torn off" the side of his face where the noose had been, "his eyes were popped," and his tongue was "swollen and hanging from his mouth." His face had turned purple. California executed 307 men by hanging between 1893 and 1942, 215 at San Quentin and 92 at Folsom prison. Mercifully no problems were reported with the three hangings carried out since 1977 (2 in Washington and 1 in Delaware).

Hangings

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